The Mouse and the Money

Summary

The fable of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse is used to illustrate
the parable of the Rich Fool.

Scripture

Luke 12:13-21 The Parable of the Rich Fool.

Cast

Narrator
City Mouse (Well dressed)
Old Country Mouse (with old stick for a cane)
Young Country Mice (overalls or jeans would be suitable)

Script

NARRATOR: A city mouse moved to the country to live in the walls of an
old house with a lot of country mice. He began lording it over them from
the start. He trimmed his whiskers, put mousseline in his hair, talked
with an accent, and told the country mice that they came from the wrong
side of the mouse tracks.

CITY MOUSE: My ancestors were of the French aristocracy. Our name still
appears on bottles of great French wine: ‘Mise du chateau,’ which means
mice in the chateau, or castle mice.

NARRATOR: Everyday the newcomer bragged about his forebears, and when
he ran out of ancestors he made some up.

CITY MOUSE: My great-great-grandfather was a theater mouse at the Comedie-Francaise,
and he married a cathedral mouse, of the cathedral mice of Chartres.
At their wedding a dessert named in their honor, mousse chocolat, was served
to millions of guests.

NARRATOR: Then the city mouse told how his family had come to America
in the bridal suite of a great French liner.

CITY MOUSE: My brother is a restaurant mouse at ’21,’ and my sister’s
at the Metropolitan,

NARRATOR: He went on to tell of other ancestors of the family who had
been in such productions as the Chauve Souris and Die Fliedermaus and Les
Trois Mousquetaires.

CITY MOUSE: Not a mouse in our house was common house mouse.

NARRATOR: One day, wandering through forbidden walls of the country
house, to show his inferiors that he knew his way around, he came upon
a treasure in currency which someone had hidden years before between the
plaster and the lath.

OLD COUNTRY MOUSE: I wouldn’t eat the stuff. It is the root of evil
and it will give you greenback bellyache.

NARRATOR: But the city mouse did not listen.

CITY MOUSE: I’m already a mouse of distinction and this money will make
me a millionaire. I’ll be loaded.

NARRATOR: So he began to eat the currency, which consisted of bills
of large denominations, and he drove off one or two of the young country
mice who wanted to help him eat the treasure, saying,

CITY MOUSE: Finders are not their brother’ keepers.

NARRATOR: The city mouse told his country cousins,

CITY MOUSE: Blessed are the rich, for they can pay their way into the
kingdom of Heaven.

NARRATOR: And he got off a lot of other witticisms, such as “Legal tender
is the night” and “Money makes the nightmare go.” And so he went on living,
as he put it, on the fat of the lath.

CITY MOUSE: When I have eaten it all, I shall return to the city and
live like a king. They say you can’t take it with you, but I’m going
to take it with me.

NARRATOR: In a few days and nights, the arrogant city mouse with
the fancy and fanciful French forebears had eaten all the money, which
amounted to an ambassador’s annual salary. Then he tried to leave
the walls of the old country house. But he was so loaded with money, and
his head was so swelled, that he got caught between the plaster and the
lath and could not get out, and his neighbors could not dislodge him, and
so he died in the walls, and nobody but the country mice knew that the
had been the richest mouse in the world.

OLD COUNTRY MOUSE: This is the posture of fortune’s slave: one
foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.